Rolling in deep space
in billions of galaxies
circling quintillion stars
are planets that Hubble has told us
are like ours, hospitable to life,
eyes and lips,
oxygen and nitrogen,
carbon: maybe fish and chips
and a Labor Party.
China may as well be such a planet
with its inscrutable bureaucracy,
values and script so foreign,
seeding Beijing clouds with silver
to bring rain, but
making snow,
polluting as though
its prime mission
is to set the world on fire.
But I need not fly
to China, or teleport to space
to find life forms that baffle
with their foreignness.
I can turn to you, so close,
whom I think I know and then
discover by accident one day
that all is not, very not,
as it has seemed.
Why did I not see
in those early images from space
the touch of your airbrush
or sense that your desire for fame
masked by your Oriental calm
eclipsed sound judgement.
Exoplanet? A cosmic flare of truth
led you up the stairs
to jump and end it all.
